With ease of usability and applicability of computers or computing devices in modern daily life, governmental or non-governmental entities constantly store information on computer-readable media. In addition, due to various business or legal considerations or requirements, information that has been stored is constantly been backed-up or preserved on a regular, such as daily or weekly, basis to removable or computer-readable media. These removable backup computer-readable media are not accessed on a regular basis, but the information stored therein may not be destroyed for various reasons, such as legal, internal auditing, or other reasons. Although new technologies have continuously increased storage capacity of each unit of these removable computer-readable media, while reducing the size of the unit, the need for physical locations to house these units continue to be a logistic concern.
It would be optimal for each entity (e.g., government or non-government entity) to store all units of the computer-readable media in one location, such as the corporate headquarter, where each unit can be set aside or can be accessed at one's convenience. However, it may be impossible for an enterprise to house all information or data in one location. As such, these removable computer-readable media are transported to offsite locations, and tracking or labeling of each unit becomes necessary.
For example, current tracking or labeling practices include affixing a bar code label to identify each unit of the removable computer-readable medium. A list includes information that associates each bar code with a description of data stored in the removable computer-readable medium unit. When a shipment of removable computer-readable medium units arrive at an offsite location (e.g., a warehouse), a user uses a bar code reader to read the bar code and the user compares the read bar code with the information on the list to confirm that the proper removable computer-readable medium units have arrived. The removable computer-readable medium units next may be shelved according to a desirable cataloging or indexing scheme. When it is time to return the computer-readable medium unit or destroy data on the computer-readable medium unit, the user would retrieve the removable computer-readable medium unit from the shelf and perform the necessary operations.
The existing practices and techniques, while accomplish the purpose of tracking and labeling computer-readable medium units, fail to permit rich information needed in managing computer-readable media. In addition, current practices continue to rely on various manual and laborious activities and are inefficient. Even if some automated processes are used, the information about each computer-readable medium unit needs to be updated from time to time by a human operator.